CHAPTER 4
A LITTLE ROBOT WITH A GALACTIC MISSION
The little robot scanned his surroundings with the sensors and found himself being one of many other robots being created and brought online and out from manufacturing machines onto conveyor belts above and below. If being made in a massive robot factory is the simple answer, then that would satisfy his curiosity. However, scanning the warbots in front of him, behind him, and everywhere he looks showed him otherwise. His sensors indicate that these robots are designed and built for war, strictly programmed to serve someone named Chairman Alonzo Drek and his people called the Blarg, arranged to eliminate any targets assigned to them, and clad in raritanium steel alloy that can withstand basic blaster fire and perhaps any stronger weapon.
To say the least, it surprised the small robot to find himself in the middle of a manufacturing plant that assembles mechanoids that engage in warfare and cause destruction under the command of one person. The very place he is created in, for the same purpose. And yet, something tells him that he's completely different from the warbots. Perhaps even constructed to know better than to participate in such dreadful activity. Even the better part of himself he doesn't quite understand yet agrees.
What comes next would give him a stronger piece of information and a reason as to what he should or could do against whatever intention this Chairman Alonzo Drek has for the warbots. The conveyor belt he stands on came to a stop for the warbot in front of him underneath a red arch-shaped machine with a computer screen mounted on it. A greenish-yellow light illuminated from above and beamed on the warbot, filled with some type of digital code that disappeared halfway down the mechanical soldier's head.
After the digital code glow dimmed, the conveyor belt moved for the small automaton's turn. He looked up at the device that emitted the light from beneath the red arch and wondered if he was about to be scanned. Once again, the chartreuse light brightened and showered a rain of digital code down at his head. And as it had done before, it faded when it reached him.
The little robot froze and widened his optics in sudden response. He was not being scanned, he was receiving data. Targets to be precise, provided to him by a target distributor.
TARGETS ACQUIRED
SOLANA GALACTIC PROTECTION LEAGUE
Branches:
Solana Army
Galactic Space Navy
Galactic Ranger Corps
Base(s) of Operations:
Central Command Headquarters
Planetary Defense Centers
Location(s):
Metropolis, Kerwan
Various planets
The information he received from the target distributor shook him to the core. The warbots are receiving targets to eliminate—the Solana Army, the Galactic Ranger Corps, and the Galactic Space Navy—just as according to their three prime objectives. Chairman Drek seeks to wipe out the Solana Galactic Protection League in its entirety.
From what the small bot's databases can show as he read through them speedily, the S.G.P.L. is a peacekeeping alliance dedicated to maintaining civil peace and order in the Solana Galaxy and safeguarding its many worlds joined under its government. In its database entry as well as the target information for reference, the League has three service branches, each with its respective primary mission.
First, the Solana Army. This branch of military forces is committed to defending planets and conducting a variety of defensive combat operations on land, in the air, and underwater. It has divisions stationed on planets protected by Planetary Defense Centers, bases with towers that control their defense systems, should the enemy alarm them with the threat of invasion. If a planet is in more danger and at the mercy of the enemy than others, and the perils are too grave for one division to handle by a great measure, then that division would certainly need reinforcements in its fellow divisions.
When they are not being deployed for war, the Army's soldiers train at their bases to maintain and improve their physical and mental conditioning, combat readiness, weapon mastery, and vehicle abilities through discipline, teamwork, and leadership skills. They also take part in humanitarian relief efforts by providing food, shelter, and medical assistance, conducting search and rescue, aiding citizens with their recovery, and helping to rebuild their homes.
Next, the Galactic Space Navy. As defending the galaxy in space is one of its principal duties, the Space Navy furthermore focuses on conducting expeditions for diplomatic affairs, deep space exploration, and scientific research (those three roles had the little robot pause interestedly for a few seconds). Many of its starships patrol throughout the galaxy on a variety of different tasks. One such task can be escorting ships traveling from one world to another for passenger transport, interplanetary cargo shipping, or diplomatic affairs. Not that there will always be danger creeping from any corner, but patrolling galactically, answering distress hails, policing trade routes, etc., are important when ensuring none would disrupt the calming peace amongst all spaceships going about their usual business. One of the most recognized and distinguished starships in the interstellar history of the Solana Galaxy is the pride of the grand fleet, the SGS Phoenix.
And finally, last but not least, the Galactic Ranger Corps. Galactic Rangers serve to protect the galaxy and save innocent people in immediate response to any perilous invasion or high-level threat occurring on any planet, across the stars, and beyond. They are arguably considered to be the elite guard of the S.G.P.L. due to their bravery in the face of evil forces and determination to win the fight against them for Solana to be peaceful again until another form of menace arises for them to defeat. They are highly trained special mission operatives grouped into many separate teams, but they never go into action alone, not without unique skill sets of expertise, starships issued to them by the Space Navy as their mobile bases, and starfighters and inventories of weapons and gear with every teammate's distinctive customization.
Galactic Ranger squadrons are comprised of one team plus two to four units of Solana Troopers, soldier bots who fight alongside them on the battlefront and are a countermeasure against robotic enemies from the opposing side. When necessary, the best troops from the Solana Army can be selected for transfer to a squadron as a team's additional support aboard their command ship. And sometimes, Ranger teams can allow any allies to join them on any current mission as long as they have the needed skills, abilities, experience, and training of any kind, formal or informal, that make them qualified for it until the mission is accomplished.
The little robot finished reading the database entries on the S.G.P.L. with quick but thorough attention to every detail and saw the warbot answering a robotic arm with a single eye on what sounded to be the three prime objectives of its programming. He listened carefully and watched as the arm commenced its inspection of the warbot while holding onto a blaster until all three had been stated.
"State your three prime objectives," the robotic arm said.
The warbot replied, "One: Serve Chairman Drek and the Blarg. Two: Eliminate troops of the Solana Galactic Protection League on sight. Three: Destroy Galactic Rangers."
"Inspection complete. Weapon issued." The arm gave the soldier its blaster and grabbed another from a rotating weapon supply unit.
Now it was time for the little robot to be inspected for the statement of his prime objectives.
"State your three prime obj—huh?" The blaster-holding robot arm looked both ways at its level, confused by the apparent lack of another warbot.
"Hmm," the little robot pondered, catching the arm's attention as it looked down on him. Then he greeted it with a hand wave, "Hello."
The arm's optic instantly scanned the small automaton, startling him. "Warbot defect detected. Serial number: B5429671. Prepare for immediate termination!" The arm then firmly pointed the blaster at him and got ready to fire it at him.
"Oh dear!" cried the explicitly designated B5429671, as he looked at the blaster's barrel light up on the inside, then quickly turned around to jump off the conveyor belt just in time before the shot from the arm's weapon could damage him. He landed on a catwalk below and scurried away while the arm kept firing at him.
The pistol's blasts sounded across the entire room, alerting a group of men from the platform with a large computer screen. B5429671 couldn't quite tell who they were, but he could hear one of them with a deep voice say, "What's going on? Why do I hear gunfire?"
A security camera on a wall sensed the commotion at the prime objectives inspection, moved down in the direction where the robot arm is shooting, and detected the warbot defect making his escape from the factory. The security camera's lens immediately flashed from white to red as the whole factory went on red alert. The assembly lines stopped their production, beacon lights lit up in red and rotated, the alarm buzzer blared throughout the factory, and a computerized female voice announced, "Defect B5429671 detected. Defect B5429671 detected. All present security please commence seek and destroy protocol. Repeat: commence seek and destroy protocol."
B5429671 heard this, but he wasted no time and kept on running for a means of escape. Meanwhile, Chairman Drek, General Thurx, Dr. Mozak, and Zed looked down from the central platform to see where the warbot defect is running to. They couldn't see him anywhere until Thurx, with his good eye still as sharp-sighted despite the lack of vision in his damaged left eye behind the patch, saw a door open from the far opposite side below by the assembly lines. He's spotted the defect.
"There it is! It just ran into Corridor D3!" Thurx shouted and pointed his metallic finger at the doorway through which B5429671 bolted out of the manufacturing room.
Dr. Mozak ran to the supercomputer's control panel, switched on the factory's PA sound system, and loudly spoke into a microphone, "Attention all personnel on Level D! The defect designated as B5429671 has entered Corridor D3! Get over there and dispose of it, immediately!"
The scientist's announcement urged all Blarg troopers standing guard in Level D to ready their blasters and make their way to the defect's location with haste. So did the sentrybots. These robots, like the warbots, are large and powerfully built with steel-gray armor, but their arms, legs, and torso are equally bulkier and their heads are somewhat cylindrical, with two circular optics, long antennas on top, and no mouth. They also have dark orange articulations and a green light irradiating from inside their chests due to being powered by ion energy.
Hurryingly sprinting through the corridor as the emergency lights flared red, the diminutive B5429671 had so many questions on his central processing unit. He thought, What am I doing here? Why am I created in the same factory with these brutes? What does this Chairman Drek want that he needs the Solana Galactic Protection League to be destroyed? Those questions made him inclined to believe there must be more to Chairman Drek's motives than just getting rid of an entire agency predicated on the defense of peace, order, and harmony between all worlds and peoples in the Solana Galaxy. The growing army of warbots built for the Blarg and the list of elimination targets he acquired are only two pieces in the puzzle. Perhaps just one more should complete it to reveal the Blarg leader's plot, give him enough evidence to help him warn the League, and gain their assistance in dealing with this imminent threat.
The defect took a hard left further to another corridor and saw a junction. He decided to run to it and turn right, hoping the course of direction would show him the way to freedom out of the factory.
But he was wrong.
B5429671 abruptly stopped in his tracks to see shadows moving along the walls of the junction corridor in front of him. He veered his head around to look back at the path corner and saw more shadows moving on the wall. To his worry, the Blarg troopers and sentrybots are coming in his direction to destroy him. He has nowhere else to run now!
The little robot began to shake fearfully. What is he going to do?
Suddenly, an air vent cover on his left popped open, and a small, floating orange robot appeared from inside the duct. Data archives show B5429671 that this is an "Infobot," commonly one of many others produced by the Gadgetron Corporation to record and contain videos of sorts like messages or crucial information. They even hold coordinates to the specific planet where a recording originated.
Aside from orange being their default color, each infobot bears the exterior design of what is closely akin to a cross between a pair of binoculars and an insertable hard drive when in its compact portable form. That's when it can be inserted into any media console like a video cartridge where play the info-vid contents on. In robot form, its upper half folds forward to convert into a flat head with glowing cyan round optics, a short, blue-bulbed, and retractable receiver antenna on the right side, and a narrow neck, while the lower half extends out a pair of small robotic arms with big three-fingered hands like the warbot defect's and shows a pattern of three blue rectangles in front that illumined faintly. Another info-vid display function shows that the infobot can flip its mouth open like a laptop computer to reveal an expandable flat square-shaped screen inside, along with a small keyboard of audio/video control buttons in the middle of the base, speakers on both sides and a USB port in the bottom center.
The infobot leaned and turned his head both ways to see the factory's guards bound to close in on its polished silver acquaintance, and motioned its hand for him to scurry into the ventilation shaft with it. B5429671 did so as he grabbed the air vent's cover and placed it back in behind him, then followed the infobot to a safe spot for any information it may have for him. Not needing to turn around to listen, he could only hear the Blarg guards stop in confusion at how they couldn't find him in the very corridor Dr. Mozak said he was running away in.
It didn't take long for the two small robots to navigate the ventilation system to a safe spot when they reached an air purification maintenance room, where they can for a few moments not be found nor seen by any trooper or sentrybot seeking out the defect. They checked the area; the coast was clear, and no one was around to take them apart. B5429671 and the infobot turned to each other.
"I should thank you for leading me away from the danger in that corridor," B5429671 told the infobot, who nodded politely. He then stated observantly, "You are an infobot. I presume you have important information on Chairman Drek's plan for this galaxy."
The infobot nodded again, then began making hand gestures that the warbot defect could tell in his sources is part of Solanian Sign Language. This kind of language is primarily communicated visually and manually by people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or mute and cannot talk very well with spoken words. What he has seen the infobot do is because infobots do not have vocal synthesizers that allow them to speak like most robots; sign language makes up for it as much as their optic expressions, body movements, and the info-vid contents they hold.
When the infobot finished hand-signing, it flipped up the top part of its head to expand its screen and play a video recording of a short Blarg businessman with a pale and wrinkled face, light blue pupilless eyes, and slick black hair, and wearing a dark gray suit speaking in front of a camera. B5429671 figured this must be Chairman Alonzo Drek, and watched the video very attentively to see what malevolence he has got in mind for Solana.
INFO-VID PLAYING...
"Hello, citizens of Novalis," the Blarg leader greeted with an image of a planet called Novalis shown in the top right corner of the screen before it disappeared. "My name is Chairman Alonzo Drek, CEO of Drek Industries and president of the Blarg Confederacy. You may already know that I am also the planetary leader of Orxon. Well, sadly... I was." Chairman Drek lowered his head with what seemed to be gloom written all over his face at this statement, then lifted it back up to face the camera again. "The question as to why I say it this way brings you to the one small problem that my race, the Blarg, have."
The screen transitions to another image that shows the Blargian homeworld of Orxon. It was once a clean and healthy world, but now it is afflicted with a very toxic atmosphere and polluted environment. "Our planet has become so polluted, poisonous, and overpopulated, that we're no longer able to dwell here," Drek continued as the image showed Blarg citizens popping up on the landscape, covering their mouths with breathing apparatuses. "But thankfully, I have come up with a solution."
Next picture: a graphical schematic of a planet made with recognizably uneven pieces that are not perfectly aligned together in the right places. "We are constructing New Orxon, a pristine new world, using the choicest planetary components available in the solar system." The camera cuts back to Drek. "So, what does this mean to you, you might ask?"
The screen presents recorded footage of a gargantuan mothership with six mechanical razor-clawed arms using a massive red laser beam to cut a piece off a rich green planet to demonstrate the extraction process. "Using these Planet Harvesters, machines built with highly advanced world-building technology, which you couldn't possibly understand, we will be extracting a large portion of your planet and adding it to our new one. The same thing applies to the next planets we select for this glorious undertaking of creating our perfect home."
The video returns to focusing on Drek. "Unfortunately, this process will affect the mass of your planet, causing it to spin out of control and, depending on which way it flies out of its orbit, drift into the sun, where it will explode into a flaming ball of gas, or otherwise drift far away from it and freeze. But, of course, sacrifices must be made," he coolly stated with a smile like it was not a big problem at all.
Drek added, "Oh, and just so you are aware. If you happen to look up in the sky and find Blarg warships entering your world, do not worry. They will be deploying legions of Blarg troopers into the specified portion selected for extraction from Novalis, and then the troops will begin policing its vicinities and supervising the mass evacuation. The portion that a Planet Harvester will be removing is..." The camera panned to the right so that an image of a crater on Novalis with a city at the edge of it would appear on Drek's left side. "... the City of Tobruk Crater! We Blarg picked this one to be integrated into New Orxon due to its reputation for being one of the galaxy's best sources of clean water and having the best purification and sewage systems."
The visual representation of the City of Tobruk Crater disappeared, and the camera panned to the left to bring Drek back into the center. "In two days, all citizens residing within the city's urban areas, nearby rural areas, and probably... places of low income as well," he chuckled callously when he said that last part. "... must vacate to their transports and come prepared to leave by noon. So, please start taking this time to gather all of your needed belongings and book a flight out of Novalis. Or, if you wish to stay in your world, then I suggest you look for new residences where you and your families plan on relocating to, away from the city."
"That is all for today, citizens of Novalis. Further updates will follow if anything changes. Thank you for your cooperation," the Chairman concluded.
"Cut!" called an off-screen male voice, presumably the director of this announcement video.
When the video was thought to be finished, Drek's behavior changed. "And if you don't like it, you can take your whining, sniveling, snot-nosed populations, form a single file line behind me, and kiss my a—!" he stopped before he could finish when he looked to the right at someone telling him something. "We're still on? WELL, TURN IT OFF, YOU IDIOT!" he yelled.
END OF INFO-VID.
RECORDED: APPROX. 7 HOURS AGO.
Widening his green optics and opening his mouth, the silvery chrome automaton looked on in shock and horror. This is Drek's plan: to create the perfect homeworld for all Blarg with pieces taken from other planets in the galaxy, at many billions of people's perils.
Everything that B5429671 has seen and found in this very factory is coming together and making sense now. Orxon is made a complete environmental hazard and the Blarg are left without a permanent world to live in. So, if the New Orxon project is to become successful for the inhabitation exclusively by Drek's people, he would give the Blarg Army the support of warbots created to destroy anyone who stands in the way of his scheme, more particularly everybody involved in the Solana Galactic Protection League. The Solana Army, the Galactic Space Navy, and the Galactic Ranger Corps are obstacles unless the Blarg have the right militaristic means to overpower them so they won't intervene.
To what end does Drek hope to achieve and gain from such madness? B5429671 thought, fearing what this cruel despot might do after he's accomplished his plan for New Orxon. Why couldn't he just think of a more considerate way of making a home for his people instead of tearing other planets apart for their fragments?
He decided to dwell on this later. When the infobot closed its head and converted itself into its cartridge form, B5429671 grabbed and stored it into his torso after he let his air vent open. As he did, the infobot was shrunk down to size by a device that lit up in green, dematerialized, and absorbed into him. He has a miniature quantum storage unit in his front compartment behind the closed air vent, a device built into him to shrink items and store them inside for safekeeping.
With the target list, the data on the warbots' programming, and the infobot in his possession, B5429671 knows what he must do now. He set himself with his own prime objective.
MISSION: SAVE THE GALAXY.
The defect heads into an air duct that leads back into the ventilation system. Trying to escape it would be comparable to running aimlessly in a maze. So, he scanned the system's structure for possible ways to get out of it and the factory's many corridors. Using this and following the shafts closely to know the right ways to go and exit, he found his way outside the air ventilation shaft and entered Level E, his quickest way to flee the factory.
The hall on this level had no guards intensely hunting for B5429671 as far as he can tell, so it was particularly safe despite the alarm sounding and red lights flashing. The little robot scanned the pathways again and assessed that the directions he should go are straight, turn left down the hall, then take a right, go straight again, go on another right through a corridor longer than the first turn, skip the other one on the left along the way, and finally to the left on a hall that shows him a junction with a recycling chute door in the middle. Simply jumping through that will send him sliding straight down the recycling chute right into a scrap metal container. He will be out of the factory after that.
His directions are set. B5429671 began his run to the recycling chute...
... until he heard thudding steps coming from behind him.
The tiny robot turned around slowly and saw a sentrybot towering over him and looking down at him with furrowed optics.
"Aah!" he cried as he jumped an inch, startled by the sentrybot's large and threatening form as its optics turned from green to red and arms prepared to grab him. Seeing this, B5429671 quickly ducks the attacker when it tries to seize him by the head and makes a run for it.
The now red-eyed sentrybot extended its arm in the direction of the escaping defect and shot an energy projectile at him. The blast hit the floor near him, who yelped at the impact. The short robot looked back again to see the sentrybot catching up to him while shooting more energy blasts at him. He may be a small target for this mechanical guard, but dodging is a very advisable option to take if he is to get out fully operational and undamaged. So B5429671 ran and dodged at the same time as he stayed on his selected route to the recycling chute.
B5429671 gets close to his destination after having successfully made the first three turns down the hallways. When he thought the pursuing sentrybot was his only problem, the door across the corridor to his left—the one he indicated to skip—opened for a group of four Blarg troopers followed by two more sentrybots who came all the way here to chase him down. The sentrybot running after him must have alerted them via the guards' comm channel of his whereabouts. He takes the final left turn, swiftly and closely around the corner to spare himself seconds of running. And to his luck, more distance between him and the sentrybot. Because when it tried to grab him, it clumsily hit its shoulder against the corner, staggered, and crashed with a loud metal clang against a wall.
Feeling relieved when he looked back at the stumbled sentrybot that is just lying there at the wall dizzily, B5429671 gives himself one last push towards the recycling chute. As he gets close, two Blarg troopers jump out from both sides of the junction hall.
"Here it comes—get it!" shouted one of them on the right. The two guards dived at the defect, but he was quick enough to leap five feet above them, making them collide with and hit their heads against each other and leaving them unconscious.
His escape from the factory is starting to turn out like a miracle. B5429671 leaped at the recycling chute door right down the chute and slid down a long, straight pipe. And just as he analyzed and planned, he slides into a large container filled with metal scrap. Though a rough landing, metal against metal, the escape is nonetheless going smoothly.
The small warbot defect turned on his side to get up when he saw...
"Aaah!" the frightened B5429671 screamed, frantically backing away from an old, scrapped robot's cracked head with one optic cracked and another completely gone. It was not a pleasant sight for him to see, even for any other still-functioning robot. He just shuddered at it; if he had a stomach, he would regurgitate. This robot didn't seem to be a warbot or a sentrybot, but according to his scanning of it, this was a worker bot. B5429671 felt sad for it, wondering what misfortune befell this poor mechanical being. What did it do to deserve such a fate?
Well, he knows he can't do anything about it, now. He has a mission to save the galaxy, and many people in it, both organic and robotic. He's not going to let Chairman Drek fulfill his heinous scheme starting with Novalis.
B5429671 crawled out of the metal scrap container and wasted not another minute to find an escape pod or at least a spaceship to pilot. Luckily enough, he spotted five small black-and-gray winged Blarg minifighter jets at a launch station nearby. He rushes to the middle one, opens up the cockpit with a control switch panel by it, and hops into the craft's seat. Then, he gets the minifighter started by slamming his left hand on the engine ignition button. The cockpit's canopy automatically closed and the jet immediately took off from its launch station, flying into space and out of the planet Quartu.
Unbeknownst to the little robot, his entering and flying the minifighter did not go unnoticed. Under General Thurx's orders, two Blarg fighter pilots embarked on other minifighters and began their pursuit of the escaped defect to destroy him.
En route to Planet Kerwan...
Time: 8:19 p.m.
Having accessed his databanks earlier for instructions on how to pilot a starship after lifting off from Quartu, B5429671 easily navigated the minifighter through space without any difficulty or miscomprehension. It's quite surprising to us that for a tiny robot that has just been created, he sure made flying a starship look very simple and easy. Though he had to stand up on the seat to reach the controls and be able to see through the canopy as he steers.
Now, to the more important matter at hand: warning the Solana Galactic Protection League about the upcoming Blarg invasion on Novalis.
According to the intel from the infobot he obtained in the warbot factory's air ventilation system, Chairman Drek's Novalis announcement video was recorded approximately seven hours ago, and the invasion will be put into effect in two days. B5429671 concluded that he now has less than two days (one day and seventeen hours left) before that happens. The sooner he gets to the S.G.P.L.'s home base in Metropolis on the planet Kerwan, the better chance he'll have of gaining urgent assistance from its servicepeople. That, and making sure no other planet is being touched by the extracting claws of any Harvester.
B5429671 switches on the console's holo-screen. "Computer, set coordinates for the S.G.P.L. Central Command Headquarters on Kerwan."
"Destination set," the ship's computer confirmed. "I would be confident to say you will make it there undisturbed, but you have two incoming ships targeting you and readying to fire."
This made B5429671 concerned. "What?" He leaned to both sides of the cockpit and looked back through the canopy to see two other Blarg minifighters preparing to fire on him, just as his ship's computer said. "Engaging evasive maneuvers!"
He dodges the two minifighters' green plasma blasts several times, but one of the Blarg pilots manages to lock on to his target and make one shot count, hitting the jet's thruster. B5429671's ship spun around out of control.
"Your ship has taken significant damage to its thruster," the computer stated. "It looks like you sadly will not make it to your destination, but hey, what can you gonna do?" (It's weird that a minifighter's computer would speak this way.)
"Oh, no," B5429671 groaned and shook his lowered head dejectedly while trying to keep his ship steady. He lifts his head back up and sees he is about to enter a desert planet, followed by what he believes will be a very rough crash landing. Will he survive that?